COLLEGE STATION - The Southeastern Conference won't officially welcome Texas A&M until July 1. Florida coach Will Muschamp, however, offered an unofficial welcome this week - in the form of a lighthearted jab at Aggieland.

"You ever been to College Station?" he asked a gathering of Gators fans, according to the Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger. "It'll be the only time you go."

Muschamp threw the first punch at A&M, which Florida visits on Sept. 8, while speaking to the Polk County (Fla.) Gator Club. Muschamp is right. Aggieland, much like Gainesville, Fla., is hardly a vacation destination. The Brazos River, thanks to the fertile soil of the area, is brown and rugged near A&M, and the closest coast is the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center off of Rock Prairie Road.

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Aggies summary

Baseball

The 10th-ranked Aggies close out their regular season at Oklahoma State in a three-game series starting 6:30 tonight. A&M (38-14), OSU (32-20) and Texas (29-18) all are tied for second in the Big 12 standings with 13-8 records.

Softball

The Aggies will play host to the College Station Regional of the NCAA tournament starting Friday.

A&M, which earned the nation's No. 8 overall seed, takes on Bethune-Cookman at 7 p.m. Friday. LSU and Texas State start the regional at 4 p.m. Friday at the Aggie Softball Complex.

A&M (39-16) is playing in its 11th consecutive NCAA tournament under coach Jo Evans.

The intersection at the heart of College Station, University and Texas, features a campus gate, an Exxon, a U-Haul rental and a dilapidated high-rise hotel set for demolition. It's a good, clean college town, plain and simple, with plenty of collegiate culture, and the sprawling campus of nearly 50,000 students might as well be downtown.

But for six or seven Saturdays in the fall, it's also considered paradise for hundreds of thousands of Aggies fans - a heaven on earth new A&M defensive coordinator Mark Snyder can't wait to absorb starting in September. When Snyder accepted the gig under new coach Kevin Sumlin, ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit told Snyder, "A&M has the best student section in America."

Along those lines, Muschamp offered a crafty compliment to A&M coupled with the good-natured poke, according to the Ledger.

"It will be a very SEC-like atmosphere," Muschamp said of what Florida can expect when it visits Kyle Field in A&M's first SEC competition in any sport. "It's one of the few places in the Big 12 I would say that about."

Muschamp served as Texas' defensive coordinator from 2008-10, so he's as familiar with A&M. And to his point culturally and fanatically, A&M, is simply a better fit in the SEC than it was in the Big 12, in part because this region is rooted in the South, not the Midwest.

"When we were thinking about (adding) Texas A&M, culturally its traditions fit so nicely with the traditions we have," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said. "And the passion and loyalty of A&M fans will fit very nicely with the passion and loyalty of the fans we have."

For its part, College Station will fit very nicely with the likes of Gainesville, Auburn, Ala., Oxford, Miss., and Columbia, S.C. - comfortable college towns that rarely make the vacation short list across the South. But those Saturdays in the fall?

Aggies will gladly take tailgating along Wellborn Road and the fabled railroad tracks (hence the town's name) and congregating around the same 100 yards of earth that they have for more than 100 years over a big city's bright lights or a white, sandy beach somewhere.

Those two destinations are reserved for vacations. Aggieland is reserved for football.